Manilus Garber: “We Have to Start Looking Inward”

The Sierra Leonean architect on discovering architecture, practising across Africa, the search for an architectural identity and why Africa must learn to engage more with itself.

Architecture was not Manilus Garber’s original ambition. As a science student, he thought he would become a doctor until his mother encouraged him to consider architecture and arranged a holiday job for him at the Architects Department of the Ministry of Works.

That decision began a journey through Ahmadu Bello University, the University of Edinburgh and architectural practice across Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe and Botswana. But Garber’s reflections go beyond his own career. They touch on some of the questions that continue to confront architecture across Africa: our dependence on Western models, the difficulty of developing architecture rooted in local culture, the realities of working with clients, the challenge of rebuilding after conflict and the need for African architects to collaborate more closely across borders.

In this conversation with Teambooktu, he reflects on the journey so far—and on what African architecture must do next.

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AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY INTO ARCHITECTURE

Architecture was not what you originally planned to study. How did the journey begin?

It is a very interesting question. When I was in sixth form, doing A-Level science, I really thought I was going to become a medical doctor. But my mother, who was the principal of a girls’ school in Freetown, said to me, “No, you can’t just, like all your colleagues, go and be a doctor. Go and study architecture.” I thought, “What is architecture?”

So she got me a holiday job at the Ministry of Works, in the Architects Department, and I started liking the profession. I had a gift for art. I was very good at it, and architecture became a combination of my artistic talent being projected into the built form—into something that would last, rather than just a picture on the wall. Something people would live in.

That was how the journey started.

How did you eventually find your way to Ahmadu Bello University?

I was about to go to school in England and was waiting for admission, but time was running out. My first port of call was the School of Tropical Design in Accra. It was the first school of tropical design in West Africa. But the school closed, and most of the lecturers involved in tropical design moved to Ahmadu Bello University (ABU).

So I moved to ABU. I have not looked back since. It was a fantastic opportunity, and we had a very broad education. A period when I had the opportunity to see the development of a new city and meet some of the architects and planners involved, including Kenzo Tange. Such a fantastic time.

You also studied landscape architecture at Edinburgh. What led to that?

After ABU, I worked in Lagos with Adedokun Adeyemi, who was a very good architect and environmentally conscious.  He was the elder brother of the renowned Nigerian professor of Architecture, Prof. Adeyemi. One of the things I learned in his firm was the importance of buildings having cross-ventilation and responding to the environment.

I worked there for about two or three years, and after that I went to the University of Edinburgh, where I studied landscape architecture. I then returned to Sierra Leone and joined Jarett Yaskey and Associates. Later, I became a partner and the practice became Jarett Yaskey Garber and Associates (JYGA).

LOOKING OUTWARD, LOOKING INWARD

Some people say architecture allows you to travel the world without physically travelling because you must understand different cultures and architectural histories. Do you agree?

I think that is true because you cannot be isolated or insulated from other cultures. At architectural school, we had to learn about the history of architecture—Banister Fletcher and all those things.

But, for me, that was a staging post. We should not stop there. We should now research our own history. If architects elsewhere have developed their architecture from their own cultural history, then we need to look inward and study our own cultural history and perhaps create our own type of architecture, rather than copying what has been done in the West.

At ABU, we were also encouraged to think about rural architecture and the relationship between climate and architecture. That was a very good seed.

Yet, across Africa today, many clients still travel abroad, see something and want exactly the same thing. How do we develop our own architecture when so many people believe that the West is best?

What you say is true. But I think it is far deeper than that. It is almost as if we have been blindfolded by our quest to be like the West or other developed countries and not to look at the great resources that we have within our own continent. It is not only architecture. Look at our education—it is Western education.

I always look at countries such as Malaysia and Singapore. They hybridised Western education into their own systems. I think that is what we can do. It has to be a hybrid because you cannot throw the baby out with the bathwater.

What does that hybridisation mean in architecture?

We probably need to look more closely at how our people function in spaces. Do we function in the same way as people in Western cultures? No, we do not, to be honest. There is always a mismatch.

That is why we sometimes find people using buildings in ways that do not conform to the way the spaces were originally designed. Then people ask, “What is this design? What is going on here?” But perhaps the building simply does not respond to the way people actually function.

So I believe a hybrid approach is important. We have enormous talent for hybridising.

Does developing indigenous architecture mean simply making a building look traditionally African?

No. Some people talk about traditional architecture and think a building should look like an African mask or carry some obvious motif. But does it work? That is the question.

We need to look more at how our people function and what their needs are. I met the architect, Kunle Adeyemi, at a conference and saw his presentation on the floating school in Makoko. I found that very interesting because it was responding to particular needs. Francis Kéré also does that.

As soon as you start meeting the needs of a society, you begin to move away from simply copying architectural models—such as designing glass buildings in the tropics that require much more air-conditioning.

Can there really be one indigenous African architecture?

I don’t think so. Africa is heterogeneous. We have different climates and different cultures. You cannot simply say that African architecture must have one particular red-earth-looking motif. I don’t believe that.

I spoke to Francis Kéré and found his history very interesting. Once you understand where he comes from and the materials available there, you understand why he works the way he does. His concept is to make use of what is available in his own area. But that does not mean the same thing automatically works everywhere. What works in a dry or Saharan environment may not work in the hot, humid zone. Context matters.

And what about local materials such as compressed earth or rammed earth? Can they provide a practical answer to Africa’s housing challenges?

The answer is partly in the question. When somebody is in the village and has nothing else to use, that is what he uses. But as soon as his status starts improving, there is often no way you can convince him to have a house made from materials he associates with that earlier condition.

Perhaps we have not done enough research, as you said. Maybe the materials have to be developed differently. Maybe they have to be pigmented or made to look different. But I am not totally convinced that every solution works everywhere. In some places, it fits culturally and environmentally. In others, people may not accept it in the same way.

THE REALITY OF PRACTICE

The architect may want to respond to culture and climate, but the client often has a completely different idea. How much freedom does the architect really have?

I will be honest with you—I have not succeeded in doing as much of this hybridisation as I would have liked. At the end of the day, the client dictates the brief. When you go to international forums and meet architects from other countries, you realise that many of them have been meeting the needs of their cultures and societies.

We are still playing catch-up. We probably have not reached the level of self-confidence where we can fully do that.

What happens when a client’s demands simply do not make sense to you?

You still have to deal with the client. I remember a client in Lagos who wanted about 20 rooms in his house. I questioned the need for so many rooms and asked about the size of his family. He had about seven children, so I suggested that seven bedrooms would seem reasonable. His response was essentially that seven was not enough—he wanted to double it. We eventually settled on 14 rooms.

What can you do? That is what the client wants, and he is paying for it.

The architect’s role is to work within that reality while still trying to shape the building around the client’s character and culture, and to introduce ideas and elements that the client may not have considered.

You have spoken quite strongly about classical buildings with massive columns appearing in Africa. Why does that concern you?

One of the building types I hate to design—but which I have had to design, even recently—is these classical buildings. They have no relationship to our culture. You see these massive Corinthian columns and I ask myself: what does this mean in Africa? This is not Rome or Greece.

But clients will pay good money for them. So what I say is, if you want to do it, let’s do it right.

When I worked in South Africa, I saw similar architectural expressions, but I understood that they were connected to a particular cultural history—the Dutch culture and the architectural traditions that came with it. That is their history. But then you go to Sandton City or one of these places like Cape Town, you see these things and say, “I’m going to put that in my village, and in fact, bigger!” (laughs) What does it mean?

Your career has taken you through different parts of Africa. How did that journey develop?

After returning to Sierra Leone, I became a partner in Jarett Yaskey Garber and Associates. At the time, we did not have many architects in Sierra Leone, so I brought architects from Nigeria to work with us.

Then we had the war. All hell broke loose. My office was burned down by the rebels. I lost my practice and left the country. Eventually, I went to Zimbabwe, where I worked with a major architectural practice and helped run the firm.

After Zimbabwe, I went to Botswana, where I opened the architectural arm of an engineering practice. Later, I established another independent practice. Eventually, I came back to Sierra Leone and continued.

What did practising in different parts of Africa teach you about architecture?

One of the obvious differences is climate. In Southern Africa, for example, you have winter, so in residential buildings you have to design fireplaces and think about heating. You do not need cross-ventilation in quite the same way.

The buildings also replicate some of what is done in Europe because the climate suits it. There are cultural similarities and differences as well. In South Africa, for example, Dutch and European architectural traditions were part of the history of some of the communities there. That is different from simply importing a building type into a completely unrelated context.

BUILDING THROUGH CHALLENGE

Freetown’s terrain is very distinctive. How do you approach designing in such a difficult landscape?

A lot of our projects have involved difficult and sloping terrain. The first thing you have to do is a topographical survey. You can see where people have not done that. They build buildings that become monstrosities because they have no respect for the terrain.

They want to build flat structures on a hillside. We insist on understanding the topography and allowing it to inform the design. We try to work in sympathy with the terrain.

JYGA did a lot with some others- a lot of planning for the government- for the beach and some of the hillside areas but unfortunately it was not respected. The only aspect that got some respect was about five kilometers of Lumley beach. That beach is meant to be the exact replica of Copacabana in Brazil. I used the Copacabana master plan for the beach but I must be honest with you: it’s not easy to get things done.

Were there particular projects in Sierra Leone where these challenges became especially significant?

One project I can think of is the World Bank Country Office in Sierra Leone. We completed it and it became the first LEED Gold building in Sierra Leone.

Another extremely interesting project has been the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Temple project, where we have been working as supervising architects. In all my years of working in architecture, I have not seen that level of detail.

It has been a very challenging project, extremely detailed, and the supervision we have had to give has been just out of this world.

You also worked on the International Conference Centre after the war. What made that project significant?

The Bintumani International Conference Centre had been burned down by the rebels. It had originally been done by some of the early architects involved in practice in the region. We refurbished it and brought it back.

It was another very challenging project. One of the major challenges after the war was that a lot of skilled workers had left Sierra Leone. We had lost different skillsets. After the war, it was almost like starting all over again. That remains a challenge.

How do you see architectural education developing in Sierra Leone after those challenges?

There are now two schools of architecture in Sierra Leone producing architects. The late Arc. Femi Majekodunmi sent a professor who helped set up the curriculum for the School of Architecture. One thing I would like to see is greater collaboration between those schools and schools in Nigeria and elsewhere.

Instead of always looking towards the West—to London or the United States—we should start thinking inward and collaborating within West Africa.

THE CITY, THE PROFESSION AND THE FUTURE

How do you see the changes taking place in Freetown?

For me, the most frustrating part of it is that the Freetown metropolis has outlived its capacity completely. It is too overcrowded. Businesses and development are beginning to move into other areas, but if government does not make a conscious effort, people will simply continue opening up and developing new areas.

I have spoken to the Central Government about building satellite towns. Let us build other development areas that are properly planned. That is really one of my major frustrations.

What about the practical challenges of construction and development in Sierra Leone?

We import almost everything. Except for some basic materials such as sand, stone, cement and wood, a great deal has to come from outside. We have local artisans who can make things such as windows and doors, but we do not have the big factories and building-material producers that you have in Nigeria. It is partly a question of economics of scale. Sierra Leone is a small country.

Young architects are now questioning the future of the profession, particularly with new technology and AI. What do you see as important for Africa?

One of the things I took away from the UIA in Barcelona was the need for Africa to have more cross-border engagement with itself. We should not be working in silos. Otherwise, people come from outside Africa and take our jobs.

Why should a Nigerian practice not work in Sierra Leone? Why should a Sierra Leonean practice not work in Ghana or Nigeria? We should start thinking about West Africa as a greater market. That can open up opportunities. When I was studying, there were only a few schools of architecture in Nigeria. Now there are many more. So the market also has to expand.

What is your strongest advice to African architects?

We have to start engaging with ourselves. We have to start looking inward. That does not mean ignoring the rest of the world. We must learn and engage with the world. But we cannot continue working in isolation from one another or looking outside Africa for every solution and every opportunity.

Africa has to start engaging with Africa.

We have enormous resources, enormous talent and enormous opportunities. The question is whether we are prepared to recognise them—and work with one another.

ON A PERSONAL NOTE…

Finally, if you had not become an architect, what do you think you would have done?

I think I would have been a musician—or perhaps gone into finance. At ABU, I was the head of the Jazz club. When I came back, I played in church as well, and my wife still asks me why I don’t play the guitar anymore.

But architecture is almost a jealous profession. There is so much you need to understand, and it takes your time. Architecture has consumed me, I will be honest.

IN CLOSING

For Manilus Garber, architecture is more than designing buildings. It is about understanding people, places and cultures. It is about creating an African architecture that belongs to Africa itself. And after more than forty years in practice, he remains convinced that the continent’s greatest architectural achievements are still ahead.